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Friday, February 25, 2011

Today is a special day because today marks the second Guest Post blog. Our gracious guest host this time around is Goofy Girl from There is Grandeur in this View of Life. Goofy is my shoulda-been-neighbor from another state that has been here supporting and laughing at my posts when no one else will for quite some time. We've bonded over such things as:Big feet

A penchant for dying our hair funky colors

Awesome dogs

.... and cheese. Glorious, glorious cheese.

Goofy has been living my dream of staying in London and traveling to Paris and Scotland and has a bunch of pictures you can go drool over if you're like me and dream of European vacations. Go check her out, send her some lovin'.

Now We're EvenEver have one of those stories that justHAS TO BEtold because it's too good to keep to yourself? This would be one of those stories.On the night of October 31st, 2000 a group of friends & I had gathered at a house in a semi-remote part of the island where I live….and being that it was Halloween it became imperative that we do something decidedly spooky (or at least try). Collectively we had decided that wandering in the dark around the local Indian graveyard, just a 5 minute walk away through the woods, was our best bet. There were 6 of us: Molly & Nate (that's whose house were were at), Erik, Brandi, Brett (who was my fiance at the time, but is now just a dear friend), and Me.We set off down the road with double fisted beers in hand, laughing as we tried to scare each other."Oh my god! what's that?!""Shut up, that's not scary.""No! really! there was something up there, didn't you see it?""Where?""Right there!""You know what that is?""Do tell.""That'd be your horrible imagination running away from your inability to use it properly"By the time we made it to the fence we had to climb over I found myself questioning what the hell I was thinking wearing an ankle length denim skirt, birkenstock clogs and an oversized sweater… did I mention the red & white striped thigh highs? Apparently my look that night was "big hot mess" topped off with a flame red bobbed wig.

So...I guess that was indeed a costume, eh? (Pretty sure I was just lookin' to be comfy) Anyway… we all climbed over the fence and Brandi grabbed my hand and whispered "c'mon! Let's hide and scare the shit out of them!" I was game, we took off.About a minute into the woods Brandi & I found these large logs that we could lay down beside to hide us as we waited for the big "RAWWWRRR!!!" Only, as we lay there, under the cloudless sky, and the perfectly full moon (how often does THAT happen on Halloween?!) I realized there was NOTHING scary about this night. The moon shone so brightly that at 9pm I could have been sitting in these woods reading a book without any extra light needed… and it was kinda warm… WTF? We soon heard the rest of the group heading our way, and prepared ourselves for the half assed scare… but being greeted by "why are you two laying in the dirt?" kinda killed that. I think we all realized pretty fast that there would be no scares that night… or so we thought.

Giving up on wandering the woods we all headed back to the main road, climbed the fence, and began the walk back to Nate & Molly's house. Soon enough, just like in grade school, it was the girls walking together, and the boys a few steps behind in a row. Silently we picked up our pace and tried to make the gap between "us" & "them" a bit bigger. The whispers began…"we could hide just after the bend in the road and scare the shit out of them…""YES!""ok, but we'll have to start running….""Count of three?"We all agreed with giggles and took off running. Molly on the far right, Brandi in the center, and Me on the left…Molly looked back as we were running and noticed the guys were chasing us and let out a whispered yell of "to the right! the bushes on the right!" Brandi apparently needed someone to say "your other right!" as she crossed over in front of me and headed towards the woods on the left.

In what felt like slow motion, but all happened in a nano second, I tried to grab her and stop her… and she landed directly on the barbed wire fence that lined the left side of the road and let out a scream followed by a moan.Molly and I stood on either side of her and tried to lift her up, but Brandi was doubled over and dead weight. I felt my leg begin to sting, and wondered just how badly I had gashed myself when trying to "save" her (btw it was a pretty bad gash that created a 7 inch "(" along side of one of the tattoos on my leg)… but put the thought out of my head since I was more worried about the fact that our friend had just impaled herself on a thick barbed wire fence through her gut. I got down on my knees and looked at her face, I asked her if she was okay…… she let out a laugh, and then raised her hand… WITH THE BEER STILL IN IT… and took a sip.

"BRANDI!!! Put down the fucking beer! Dumb ass!" I yelled.

"Wait, it's almost gone…" she said as she took another sip.Molly and I exchanged glances, kicked Brandi in the butt, literally, and she dropped the beer. We both grabbed her by the belt loops and yanked her upright. She didn't have a mark on her…the thick part of the waistband of her jeans is what landed on the barbed wire, and I was the only one bleeding that night. The guys were all standing there watching the spectacle and laughing… but then they sort of realized how serious it could have been and individually asked Brandi if she was okay.We continued on our walk to Nate & Molly's, and as we were just rounding the corner by the giant barn at the Ag Hall (Agricultural Hall) we collectively decided that Brandi needed to make it up to all of us for the stupid scare, and told her that unless she went through the barn up ahead, alone, she wouldn't be allowed back in the house, and no more beer.Brandi stood there and looked ahead at the barn. I gotta be honest, at night, regardless of full moon and warmish weather, that is one freaky foreboding looking' building. It was pitch black inside, and I knew that Brandi would be scared….

"You guys, really?!" she whimpered.

"YES" we all replied and pointed in the direction of the barn. It seemed only fair for some reason.

The nice person in me suggested she just "take off running" and Molly agreed. We convinced her to start here on the road and just run at full speed all the way through the barn (it's HUGE btw) and back. So Brandi finished her last beer, re-tied her shoe laces, and prepared herself as we stood around her in a "Children Of The Corn" style semi-circle eggin' her on….

Brandi closed her eyes tight and took off like a shot in a perfect straight line for the opening.. and as she drew closer we almost couldn't see her anymore…. it was like the darkness ahead had swallowed her…. then there was this really loud *KaThUnK* noise that just silenced us. I think we all lost our breath in that instant. We were about to yell out for her till we heard a distant whimper from the barn……..

"you guuuuuuys?" It was Brandi.

Her voice still in the distance…."You guys, the doors to the barn aren't open….they're painted black."

It took a good 10 minutes to get us all up from the ground due to laughing so hard our legs stopped functioning. Brandi slowly walked back to us and just stood there with her arms crossed staring at us rolling around in the dirt with tears of laughter in our eyes."We good? We even?" she asked.Our only answer was more laughter.

Friday, February 18, 2011

If you're a drinker, then chances are you have your very own "The tequila story." Everyone I know does. Justin got drunk on tequila at a company Christmas party and ended up breaking his thumb. He doesn't know how. My mom told us that dad got drunk on tequila over a vacation and sat in the bathtub laughing manically to himself and telling her he was in the mafia. My story does not involve breaking bones or sitting in bathtubs. It involves puke. Lots and lots of puke.

We went on our first cruise as a family four months before I turned 21. Now I wasn't a big drinker but I had definitely done some drinking in my time, and I was super disappointed that I couldn't legally get schwasted around my parents, sisters, and grandma in a tropical location. The boat we were on had 18 barsand a dance club that was 18 stories up with a 360 degree view.

I begged my dad to slip me drinks the whole week, and he did comply here and there with a daiquiri or margarita. But I wanted more. I begged him to have a 'father/daughter' drunkfest with me. We were on vacation! Finally, on the last night on the boat, he gave in. There was the pesky problem of me not being 21 though, and we weren't sure that I could get served even with his consent. So what do we do?

I go up to Grandma's room and get her ship I.D. You see, back in 2005, Princess Cruise lines did not include a picture I.D. on their ship cards, or a date of birth. They simply branded the card "A" for adult in the bottom right hand side of the card and you were set to drown yourself in booze if you wanted to. With that, I became Alice.

The first two bars we checked out I stuck with the easy stuff - two 16oz daiquiris. At the third bar I got a beer. At the fourth bar I got another beer. I was pretty good at this point. It's then that dad says:

"You want to put some hair on your chest?"

"Sure"

"We'd like two shots of tequila please."

Not just any tequila, either. He ordered 1800. And when the guy set them down in front of us they were double shots, in those extra large shot glasses. Let it be known I had never had tequila before. I was nervous. Dad ordered more beer as a chaser and down the hatch went the tequila. I laughed afterward - what the hell was he talking about?

"That shit was smooth!"

"Oh yeah? Want to do another?"

I did.

Things start to get blurry at this point. I remember snippets of the night. I remember walking around to three or four more bars (continuing to get double shots at each). I remember sitting by the pool for a while chatting. I remember laying out on the deck chairs (even though it was well past dark and probably chilly) talking and getting all drunk emotional. I remember dad making me walk a straight line and being shocked at how well I did it (I have no idea how I did this; he was probably too shit-faced himself to really see me.)

I remember being back inside at one point at yet another bar and walking through the dining room to get to the bathroom and how everything literally looked like this:

In all, I had two 16oz mixed drinks, five beers, and eight double shots of tequila. If you do the math, that's approximately sixteen ounces of tequila.

As all good things do, the night had to come to an end. He dropped me off in the room I shared with my sister Rachel and I crawled in to bed. In my clothes.

Here's the thing. Since it was our last night on board we had to pack all of our bags up earlier that evening and set them outside to be stored with only the outfit we were going to wear off the ship left behind. I was wearing the only outfit I had to disembark in.

The next thing I remember was sitting straight up in bed, staring at the wall, and then opening my mouth.

There was absolutely zero effort on my part to projectile vomit - all over myself a bit, but somehow all that tequila and stomach acid managed to land in the (brand-new just-bought Puma) duffel bag I was carrying off the boat.

Contents of said bag:

My digital camera
Rachel's digital camera
My four month old video camera
A $50 cookbook that was signed by our waiters (one of which was named Bruno and totally got his flirt on with me), the cooks, and the Maître De.
Our toothbrushes
Rachel's bathing suit that she had apparently forgotten to pack

The fun didn't end there. I had to crawl on my hands and knees to get to the bathroom and the toilet.

I made it as far as the threshold before I projectile vomited all over the floor.

I was able to get into the bathroom and get my face over the toilet before the third wave hit. I swear to GOD it was all Mexican food in my puke. There were tomatoes, chiles, peppers, and frijoles in the mix even though I had not eaten anything Mexican all week. SOMEHOW, somehow, in my intoxicated state, I got a towel off the rack and did my very best to clean the puke up off the floor before crawling back to my bed and passing out again. I did not remember to clean the bag up.

The next morning the phone rang quite a few times before my parents came down to see why were weren't up. I heard the door open, and I distinctly remember my dad's voice.

"Oh.....Jesus."

It isn't possible for me to accurately describe how horrific our 8 x 8' room smelled. Imagine yak's stomach acid mixed with rotten tomatoes and decaying dead bodies. That would probably get you close. I could barely function, and I was still drunk. My brand new Puma bag and the toothbrushes unfortunately had to go in the trash. So much for trying to freshen up that tossed tequila-cookie breath! I don't recall what I did to clean the cameras and video camera but they did make it home (and I later spent an hour in the garage with a q-tip cleaning vomit out of their crevices).

Hey, remember when I said that I slept in the only outfit I had to wear the next day? Oh yeah. Guess what I smelled like? Remember this picture?

It was at least 10 times worse than that. As we filed off the ship we had to show our passports at a counter. I knew that I smelled like a goat's stomach after a full day of eating rotten garbage so I quickly just flipped my I.D. onto the counter and took a big (what I hoped would not be noticeable) step away. Guy looks up at me.

"WHAT, ARE YOU JUST GONNA LEAVE WITHOUT YOUR PASSPORT???"

WTF DUDE? Is this really a yelling offense?? I'm trying to spare you from your own trip to puke city after you smell me. I take a big step back to the counter, mumble something unintelligible, grab my I.D. and scuttle away like an abused little drunkard.

We had to go into a gigantic warehouse and wait while dudes brought out everyone's luggage. Then we waited in large groups to be herded to the next location. When I found my bag I immediately hauled it as far away as I could and sat on it with my head ripping apart. People still came near. I'd see noses wrinkling, people looking around in dismay for the source of that ripe stench.

MORTIFICATION.

Finally we moved out into the parking lot where it was a shark infested water frenzy to hail a taxi cab. When a big van pulled up I jumped in and immediately went straight to the back seat. I had pulled a hoodie out of my bag, hoping that it would at least help cover up the smell until I could change. The driver of the van sniffing loudly and looking all around him and then in the rear-view confirmed that it did not.

We had driven to Florida in my dad's RV. The feeling of riding in one, if you never have, can be compared IMO to the feeling of being on a boat. It is never a good idea to try to attain sea legs when you are hung over as all mighty hell in a hand basket. So I sat at the table with a wastebasket between my legs, intermittently dry heaving and retching for the next 19 hours it took us to get home - sitting across from my GRANDMA. Who just rode along like she had no idea her granddaughter had spent all night getting blackout drink with her I.D. and was now barfing up more Mexican she had never eaten.

If that doesn't scream Leave It to Beaver Family Vacation I don't know what does.

It's been six years since then and the smell of tequila alone is enough to turn my face green. My first and last tequila story; thank God it's good enough to tell the kids whenever I get around to wanting to have some.

Monday, February 14, 2011

Happy Valentine's Day everyone! I know, I know, some of you really can't stand Valentine's Day cause you're single and bitter. We've all been there, sobbing between projectile vomits into the piss stained crapper at Denny's over lunch after one too many slugs from the emergency vodka bottle you keep under your front seat. Don't worry, eventually the fear that we'll die alone and get eaten by our seventeen cats before anyone knows we're gone forces us to find some other desperate human being and begin the long blissful remainder of our lives in servitude marriage.

And for those of you that don't hate today, Happy Valentine's Day!

On this most special of commercial holidays I wanted to make it very clear how much each and every one of you mean to me, and how happy all your sweet comments and encouragement make me.

Monday, February 7, 2011

Before I get into the main post I just wanted to say WELCOME to all the new people that have come over from Pat's blog. I thought people would get a chuckle out of the story but I didn't anticipate all the wonderful comments and new followers. So thank you, truly. Hopefully I can live up to the hype. I'm in the process of going through everyone and getting back to your blogs. I'm always on the lookout for new faces and stories but I was sort of bludgeoned with them. I'll be making the rounds in the next few weeks adding people and reading everyone else's stuff :-) Also, I only got a handful of people wanting to do guest posts - if you're interested, email me!

That being said.....

I was driving home one day, for whatever reason, thinking about something my grandma said to me once that challenged my perception of the universe.

A few years back we were eating dinner in a nice restaurant as a family and my mom got to telling this story about me that my family thinks is hilarious. It involves me being a baby, totally naked, wearing a pair of my mom's high heels, holding on to the couch for support, and shaking my bare ass back and forth at everyone in the room.

I think there might even be video of it. As soon as the story was over Grandma gets this shit-eating grin on her face and says:

"Just think, she used to do it for you guys and now she does it for her boyfriend!"

I had just turned 17 that week. I had also only been dating the guy for a few weeks and he was my first boyfriend. I am not easily embarrassed by any means, but I'm pretty sure the shock of hearing that sentence come out of my grandmother's mouth combined with the fact that it was said in front of my parents and my sisters turned my face a bright shade of red. I thought it was hilarious, and I still do, but I can not for the life of me figure out what possessed her to say that.

You see, my grandma, much like 95% of all grandmas, is a sweet little old lady. She goes to church, she watches the nature channel, she cleans everything all day, and she drinks black coffee from sunup to sundown like it's her business. She doesn't get out much and she's totally out of touch with youth culture. She's basically your quintessential Grandma. As I was reflecting on the aforementioned dinner, I thought, "Boy, I wish Grandma would say shit like that more often."

And that led to me imaging things that Grandma could say that would be hilarious. And that led to this post.

Shit I wish my Grandma said:

I wonder if my Grandma would think this is funny. I probably won't show her.

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Hey All! So I had this idea a week or two ago while I was reading some hilarious blogs and I thought, “Boy, I bet this would lend itself to some picture story-telling.” I mean, I am hilarious, but honestly I don’t always have funny shit to say. There are plenty of other funny stories out there to be told. So I had an idea that might be kind of fun: anyone that is interested can send me a story that they think is funny and would like to see in my gorgeous MS Paint renderings. I will draw the pictures to go along with it and then publish it as a guest post on my blog, maybe once or twice a month (these pictures take longer than you might think).

Just to give you an idea of what I’m talking about, I took the liberty of finding a story that I thought was hilarious and drawing it. The very first story I went with was taken from Patrick Tillett. I didn’t actually ask him before I did it, but I decided to pick one of his stories because he’s always been extremely supportive, encouraging, and downright sweet about all of my silly blog posts.

And guess what? He has a blog! And it’s awesome. You should definitely check it out. There are a lot of stories about his childhood and about serving in Vietnam that are hard to read but are so well written and so engrossing that when I first found his blog I spent probably four or five straight hours reading through them. There are also plenty of funny posts and tons of amazing photography in there as well. The story I chose was actually a response to a question someone had asked him on Formspring. You can find the original post right heeyaa. So thanks Pat for all your props. I hope you like it :-D

And if you other cake eaters like it and want to participate as a guest blogger, let me know! You don't have to have your own blog; if you read and want to tell a story just write it in an email to me. Otherwise let me know in the comments or send me a link to an already-written blog story that you want me to do. Obviously I’ll link back to your blog and totally talk you up, and you’ll be a handful of goofy-ass pictures richer (beatches).

So without further ado:

Have you ever worn woman's clothing that didn't involve it being Halloween?Of course not! Well, actually I have…Many years ago, I knew some folks that hosted a costume party 4 times a year. None of them involved Halloween. Written invitations were sent out via mail. In addition to the normal items included, there was also information relating to the theme of the party. If you did not dress appropriate to the announced theme, you did not get in the door. No matter how good a friend you were, you weren’t getting in. I had been to a couple of their parties; they were fun, but a lot of work. My girlfriend at the time (not the one that almost got me killed) came running in from the mailbox shrieking with happiness.

She told me that we got an invitation to one of the costume parties. She was beside herself with glee. I asked her what the theme of the party was.“Pimps and whores” she told me.

“What’s so funny about that” I asked her.“The guys have to be the whores!” she screamed while collapsing to the floor with laughter.“I’m not going!“Yes you are, because if you don’t, I’m going by myself!

I wasn’t at all happy about this. I finally rationalized that it wouldn’t be all that bad, because every guy there would be dressed like a prostitute, not just me. My girlfriend rented her costume; platform shoes, velvet suit, big hat with feathers in it, walking stick, etc.The night of the party, I walked out of the house in a mini-skirt, fishnet stockings, heels, wig, full on make-up, fake nails, and knockers out to there. At the time, I wasn’t overweight at all, but I’m a big person. You can imagine how I looked.

The party was really good. Somebody took a bunch of photographs, had I gotten any of them, I'd attach one to this post. YEAH RIGHT! It was hilarious to see the women trying to act “cool” and the guys trying to act “cheap.” I only knew that my spike heels were killing me. I eventually sprained my ankle and ditched them. A good time was had by all.The party ended and we left. I threw the wig in the back seat of my VW and started home. We had gone about a mile when my throttle cable broke. Of course it was on a very busy and well lit street. Don’t envision this happening in today’s world. Think about it happening in a world of no cell phones…Picture me bending over the rear end of my bug, in my mini-skirt. On second thought don’t! I did have my own underwear on, but still, don't do it. By the time I realized I couldn’t fix it myself, I had already been honked at several times.

We needed to get to a phone, in a big hurry! There were a couple of brightly lit stores that were pretty close by. They both had public phones, but I insisted that we just pass right by them and walk into the residential area.

I stopped at the first house that had lights on. We called a tow truck and went back to the car and waited. Of course the tow truck driver couldn’t stop smiling while he hooked up my car. I explained the “rules” of the party to him, but he just shook his head and kept smiling.

I’ve never gone out in public dressed in women’s clothing again. Wait, I mean I’ve never dressed in women’s clothing again.Well Jamie, I hope that answers your question…